


Cold War

by flibbertygigget



Series: Lash Back/Cold War [2]
Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Christmas Eve, Drinking, Drinking to Cope, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26071807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbertygigget/pseuds/flibbertygigget
Summary: Beth tries to regain equilibrium as her life slowly falls apart. Hardy makes a new murder wall.
Relationships: Alec Hardy/Beth Latimer
Series: Lash Back/Cold War [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1892695
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Cold War

“Are you sure you’re alright with this, Mum?” Chloe asks for about the fifteenth time.

“I’ll be fine, Chlo,” Beth says, pasting on a sort of smile. 

“Because if you’re not, if you’d rather I stay in Broadchurch another two years-”

“Don’t worry about me,” Beth says. “You just concentrate on getting your certificate. Besides, it’s not like I’ll be alone, is it?” Chloe’s jaw clenches, the familiar anger smoldering in her eyes.

“Might as well be,” she mutters. “It’s not like Lizzie’s much help.”

“Hey now, none of that,” Beth says. “I’ll be fine. I’m very proud of you, sweetheart.” Chloe nods, and then she grabs her bags and goes out into the world.

* * *

Beth doesn’t realize where she’s going until she’s there, standing outside the blue house Hardy’s rented with Lizzie fussing in the pram. She shivers as a cold wind blows up from the river, hesitating before knocking on the door. There’s a shuffling, a muffled curse, and then Hardy’s there, standing in the doorway. He stares at her, wide-eyed, obviously not knowing what to think.

“Hey,” she says.

“What’re you doing here?” he says.

“I - You said you were looking into Danny’s case.” He makes a vague noise that could be generously interpreted as a “yeah.” “Can I come in?” He shuts the door in her face.

She feels tears spring to her eyes, and she scrubs them away violently. She’s done more crying in the last year and a half than she thinks she has in the rest of her life. She’d thought that she was done with it, mostly, but him closing the door on her feels like a rejection. After Mark and Chloe and the bloody justice system itself, she doesn’t think she can deal with it. She’s maneuvering Lizzie’s pram back around, praying that the sadness will morph into honest, burning anger, when the door opens again.

“Come in, then,” he says. She stares at him. “What?”

“I - erm, alright,” she says.

“Right.” He moves away from the door and over to the small kitchen area. “Tea?”

“Please,” she says. As she lugs the pram into the living room, she gets her first chance to look around properly. There’s something suffocating about the forced cheerfulness of a place meant as a holiday house, where the closest things to personal effects are the police reports and SOCO forms scattered over the coffee table. Her eyes are drawn to one wall, where a sheet has been haphazardly pinned up.

“Milk? Sugar?”

“Just milk, please.” She brings a hand up to the sheet. “What’s under here?”

“Don’t-” It’s too late. The sheet falls away, and suddenly Danny is staring at her. She reaches out, but she can’t touch him. There are other Dannys all around her - his poor bruised neck, the punctured fingers on his right hand. Her eyes blur. She can’t breath.

“ _ Fuck _ .” There’s a hand on her arm, an arm around her shoulders, and she doesn’t know if she has the strength or the will to shrug them off. “Okay, okay, breath with me. There, that’s it.” The cold air sears through her nose and fills her lungs. She gasps, chokes, tries to hold back a sob and fails. “That’s it. You’re doing fine.”

“Urgh,” she groans. He moves away from her, and she doesn’t know whether she’s grateful for the distance or not.

“Don’t look up,” he says - orders really. Out of the corner of her eye she can see him pinning up the sheet. He disappears for a moment, then a hot mug is being shoved into her hands. “Drink that.” She takes a large gulp, wincing as it scorches her throat.

“Why the fuck - What sort of sick person has that on their wall?” Hardy slumps down next to her, staring into his tea to avoid her eyes.

“‘S an investigation board,” he says. “It helps figure out patterns, connections, helps us not forget pieces of evidence. I didn’t expect you to - I didn’t want you to see that. I wouldn’t have had it if I knew you were coming.”

“So you really are doing it, then?” she says. “You’re really trying to get Joe for real?”

“Course.” He clears his throat. He’s dressed in a shirt and tie, she realizes, even though he’s at home rather than at the station, and he’s as exhausted and scruffy as ever. “I made a promise. It was m’ fault the confession got thrown out, that the trial got buggered up like it did. Now I have to get him justice.”

“It wasn’t all your fault,” Beth offers after a too-long pause. “Some of it was Ellie. Some of it was me. Plenty of it was Mark, the fucker.”

“I was the person in charge of the investigation. It happened on my watch.”

“Not Mark. Take the blame for Ellie if you want, Lord knows she has enough on her plate without being blamed for this, but don’t make excuses for bloody Mark.” He snorts, and even though the whole situation ought to be humorless she can’t help but giggle in response. “Besides, I asked Ellie. It’s not like you two were having an affair, and that’s half of what they thought they had against you.”

“Wouldn’t have had one with her anyways. She was married.”

“I read what Olly and Maggie wrote up on you.” He’s staring into his tea again. “What’s that gonna mean, now that you’ve solved Sandbrook?”

“Mil- Barrett solved Sandbrook.”

“Still.” He shrugs.

“S’pose we’ll see once it goes to trial. Lee Ashworth’s probably going to plead guilty - now that we’ve got the bloody pendant back there’s not much else he can do. Gillespie and Claire Ashworth - we’ll see. Gillespie’s been stitched up with Lee’s confession, but Claire…” He shakes his head. “We’ll see.”

“I meant more with, you know, your ex-wife and all that.”

“You and Barrett have been gossiping about me.” Beth can’t deny that. Hardy sighs and heaves himself up from the floor. “So, you were here about Danny’s case.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I - I just wanted to know how you were doing. If I could help or anything.” He grunts.

“Not much you can do. I’ve been trying to go through your ex-husband’s movements that night, plug the holes. The last thing we need is to let the defense use that angle again.”

“And?”

“The CCTV doesn’t have a view of the car park at the time of the murder. Bloody budget cuts. I’ve asked Barrett for access to anything along the roads leading to the overlook, but it’s taking a while from the outside through official channels. The last thing we want is for this to be inadmissible in court.” Beth nods. Part of her wants to break down at the way this is being discussed so casually, but something about the way Hardy exudes professionalism tinged with sympathy makes her able to face it.

“Anything else?” she says.

“There’s also the matter of the missing hour. We didn’t get the route he took out of him in interrogation; that only came out in court. I need information on that, then we can see if the CCTV caught anything. Probably a long shot, but if we can close that bit…”

“I’ll talk to him,” Beth says. 

“No.”

“If I tell him it’ll help Danny, he’ll talk. And he’ll talk more to me than to you, anyways.” Hardy fixes her with a look, and she hates it, hates that he’s measuring how broken she is. “I can do this.”

“Fine,” he grunts.

* * *

It takes her almost two weeks to make the hour-long drive up to Shaftesbury, but when she finally comes back and knocks on his door Hardy doesn’t seem put out. Well, he closes the door in her face again, but she understands why now. In fact, she’s grateful for it.

Ellie’s sitting on the sofa this time, sorting through the papers on the coffee table. Beth’s eyes are drawn first to the wall that’s once again covered with a sheet, then to the wall opposite it, where another investigation board has been set up.

“What’s all this?” she says.

“Tea?” Hardy says. Ellie gives him an unimpressed look.

“He’s consulting for another station,” she says. “Up in Glasgow, I think.” Hardy grunts.

“Oh,” Beth says. “What’s it about?”

“Series of break-ins. Murray thinks they’re related. He asked me to see if I could find anything.”

“Who’s Murray?”

“He’s got a  _ friend _ ,” Ellie says, teasing, just as Hardy says, “M’ former DI.”

“Right,” Beth says. “I talked to Mark. He said he took Belmont Close up to where the old lighthouse used to be.”

“Excellent,” Hardy says. He presses a mug into her hands and lopes over to the covered wall, but then he hesitates. “I don’t… Christ's sake, I should have taken the lot down-”

“It’s fine,” Beth says. He gives her a skeptical look, and she tries to look confident in her own decision. “Really, it was just the - the suddenness of it all, last time. It’s fine.”

“...Alright,” he says. He takes down the sheet deliberately, and she can tell that he’s watching her reactions out of the corner of his eye. At least he seems concerned rather than pitying, which is what the look on Ellie’s face is coming dangerously close to. Beth opts to glare at Ellie rather than concentrate on Hardy. Still, she can’t suppress a flinch as the sheet comes down and Danny’s face looks out at her.

“Right,” he says, tossing a purple highlighter at her. “Route?” There’s a road map of Broadchurch pinned over where some of the more graphic autopsy photographs had been. She feels like a coward for being grateful for that.

“He went down from the overlook here,” she traces down a now-familiar path, “then turned there on the way to the old lighthouse.”

“Excellent,” he says again. “Right, Miller, do you know if there are any CCTV cameras along this road?”

“There might be some up by the lighthouse,” she says. “I don’t know if we’d still have the footage. Mark, the knob, never bothered telling us where he went, so we had no reason to keep it as evidence.”

“Try anyways. If we can get that hole plugged, we can go on to making sure that the evidence we already have is airtight. It won’t be enough to get a retrial, but it should at least be enough to hobble the defense.”

* * *

Chloe comes back to Broadchurch for the weekend of Bonfire Night. After she takes the train back Sunday, Beth spends the night tossing and turning. She calls into work on Monday morning, and it feels like backsliding.

“You look like shit,” Hardy says when he opens his door.

“Thanks for that,” she says. He starts to close the door. “You don’t need to - I can take it.” He doesn’t listen to her, leaving her and Lizzie on the doorstep once again. He reappears a minute later, offering her the mug of tea he’s holding.

“Well?” he says. “What’re you here for?”

“I’m not - I just want to know how the investigation’s going. That’s all.”

“It’s fine.”

“Fine?”

“Fine.” He squints at her. “You need sleep.”

"No, I don't."

"Don't lie to me, Latimer."

"Just leave it." He grunts and lets her through the door. There are once more cases beyond the murder of her son, but Danny is still undoubtedly the centerpiece. It makes her chest ache a little, to see that the event that started the slow destruction of life as she knew it taking over another life. Sometimes it isn't even the most difficult thing for her to deal with anymore. Hardy is more loyal than she.

"Sit down," he says. She takes the sofa, unbuckling Lizzie from her stroller and placing her on the other cushion.

"Don't you ever take a break?" she asks. He shrugs, sitting down opposite her and opening a file. "Ellie said you have a daughter." He looks up from the papers reluctantly, looking supremely uncomfortable with the situation.

"Daisy," he grunts. "Just turned seventeen."

"Only a few months older than Chloe then."

"Stop fishing, Latimer."

"Christ's sake, I’m trying to get to know you. How does Ellie even put up with you?” 

“Poorly,” he says, the corner of his mouth twitching into what might have been the barest hint of a grin before he turns back to the files.

There’s something strangely peaceful about sitting across from him as he works, watching the way his brow furrows and his lips mutter over the occasional passage. Her house, which had been a bustling home before everything had fallen apart, is silent as a chapel these days and too large and empty for comfort. His rented cabin is no more homely, but it’s small and cosy enough, and best of all it holds no ghosts for her to trip over. Her eyes slip closed and she begins to doze almost against her own will, lulled by the soft sounds of Lizzie and Hardy being there and alive around her.

When Beth wakes up, Hardy’s pacing the room, file in hand, bouncing her baby on his hip as Lizzie chews on his tie. For the first time he looks like something approaching human.

* * *

She doesn’t know why she goes to him when she hears the news, leaving Lizzie with Ellie’s dad with less than little explanation. Maybe it’s because he was the one who had kept his eyes on the goal when everything else was falling apart. Maybe it’s because fifteen years with Mark had left her with precious few friends she could rely on to be  _ hers _ and not  _ theirs _ . Regardless, when Mark’s mum calls her and hesitantly tells her that he’s got himself engaged, Beth shows up at Hardy’s cottage. She brings two bottles of wine and a litre of vodka. It’s two in the afternoon.

She hates that all that’s happened seems to have turned her into a messy drunk.

“It’s not like I give a fuck abou’ him,” she slurs after three glasses and an overfilled shot. “Mark’s a - ‘e’s a bastard, really is. I don’ wanna have anything to do with him.” Hardy hums. He’s been nursing the same glass of wine for half an hour, like a prick. “‘S just awful, y’know. Knowing tha’, tha’ he’s happy, an’ I can’t stop feeling like shit.”

“I understand,” he says. She shakes her head vehemently, the motion causing her to sway from side to side on the couch.

“You don’. I know - I know abou’ y’wife.”

“How did you-”

“Ellie tol’me,” Beth says. “Don’ tell her I told you though. Supposed t’be a secret.” He grunts, scowling into his glass. “‘S’different ‘cause, ‘cause I don’ love him anymore. We were fucked even b’fore every- everythin’ happened, an’ I don’ think I loved him since, since a long time.”

“I loved Tess at the beginning of the divorce,” Hardy says. “I don’t know when I stopped, but it was before I moved to Broadchurch. Sometimes I think I still love her.”

“Y’shouldn’t,” Beth says. “She’s a bitch.”

“You’ve not even met her.” 

“‘S’ diff’rent for you an’ me, Hardy. Ellie… she’s got it hard, but least she knows it wasn’ her fault. ‘M always thinkin’ ‘bout it, what I did wrong. I coulda been more close t’him or - or fucked him more. I coulda gone blonde.”

“Mark didn’t cheat on you because you’re not blonde; he cheated on you because he’s a bastard.”

“Damn straight.” She stares into her empty glass, mood spiraling sourly. “Did you know b’fore - b’fore - b’fore you found out? ‘Cause I thought we were alright, really. I didn’ - I didn’ think-” She reaches for the unopened bottle of wine, and Hardy grabs her wrist to stop her. She freezes. She knows that if she pulls away he’ll let go. She wants him to squeeze and bruise and make her feel something more than just a touch.

“I knew she was getting sick of me,” he says slowly. His eyes are fixed on her shoulder, as though he can’t commit to looking away. “‘M not - I’m fucking exhausting to be around under normal circumstances, Latimer, which those weren’t. Things had been… um, they’d been bad for a while. I didn’t know she was cheating, but it wasn’t a surprise, not like - not like that.” Beth’s moving before she realizes that she’s made the decision. It’s a bit awkward with the coffee table between them, but she manages to lean forward and kiss him.

At first he doesn’t respond, so Beth shifts and tries to deepen the kiss. That’s when she feels hands on her shoulders, pushing her away. She tries to resist him, but he’s turned his face away and pressed himself back in his chair and she’s realizing, slowly, that she’s just ruined everything.

“Oh, Christ,” she says.

“Beth, you’re drunk.”

“Don’t call me that, don’t you dare, not-” She’s crying now, the messy, snot-filled sort of crying that she’s only done when her anger’s run out. “And I ruined it, I’ve fucking ruined it. Jus’ one good thing I’ve got an’ I’ve fucking ruined it.”

“Look, you didn’t - Calm down.” His hands are on her shoulders again, but he’s not pushing her away anymore, just holding her. “You haven’t ruined anything. Just- Deep breaths, alright?” She nods shakily, forcing gulps of breath through her choked up throat and congested nose. “There you are. You’re alright.”

“I can’t - I’m really fucking drunk, aren’t I?” He lets out a startled laugh.

“Yeah. Yeah, you are a bit. ‘S fine.”

“I left Lizzie with Ellie’s dad.”

“I’ll call him,” Hardy says. “Just lie down and sober up, alright?”

“Alright.” He gets up and goes to the tiny kitchen. She can hear him on the phone as he makes tea, his voice low. She pulls down a red blanket from where it was tossed over the back of the sofa, rolling herself up in it. 

“If you were cold you should’ve said,” Hardy says as he returns, carrying two mugs.

“I wasn’t cold,” Beth protests. He gives a disbelieving snort, and when she laughs in response she’s strangely gratified to see the smile that she’s startled out of him. “You know,” she says, “I don’t think you’re all that bad, actually.”

“Thrilled to hear it,” he says dryly, sipping his tea.

* * *

She doesn’t see him again until it’s almost Christmas.

It's more her fault than his, she has to admit. The fact is that he had never been the one to seek her out over the course of their… friendship, if she can still call it that. She had always been the one to go to him, to show up on his doorstep with her baby and her damage and her baggage. 

He's never been anything but considerate towards her, but there had always been a certain amount of distance between them. She has no idea whether that distance was because he wanted their relationship to remain purely professional or, well, some other reason. And since she'd humiliated herself after hearing about Mark's engagement, she hasn't wanted to go back. She doesn't want to risk knowing that their relationship has changed forever.

Christmas, though, was different.

"Open up, Hardy!" she yells after knocking doesn't work. "I need to talk with you!" There's a loud crash and muffled swearing, and then Hardy opens the door. He is, Beth notices with an embarrassing amount of interest, wearing a sweat-soaked t-shirt that clings distractingly to his pecs. 

"What're you doing here, Latimer?" he says.

"Were you working out?"

"Huh?"

"You were! You were working out."

"No, I wasn't. I was, well…" He grimaces, and Beth's stomach twists. "I was packing."

"You're visiting your daughter for Christmas? That's good, that's really good."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, Ellie told me that you and her had a… tumultuous relationship."

"Don't you people have anything better to do with yourselves than gossiping about my personal life?"

"If you don't want people to speculate, you could consider talking to them. Put things out on your own…" Beth trails off, because she's finally noticed what's behind him. Or, rather, what isn't.

"You took down the investigation board," she says. He blinks, and there's no mistaking the caught out look in his eyes. "You took down  _ my son's  _ investigation board."

"Latimer-"

"Don't call me that. Don't you dare."

"Beth, then."

"Why? Why would you - you  _ promised _ you would-"

"I'm not giving up on him, Beth." She gives him an incredulous look. "Really, I'm not! But I am- I'm moving, so I had to take the investigation board down. That's all."

She should feel reassured. Why doesn't she feel reassured?

"You're leaving?" she says. The concept feels impossible.

"You were right. It's for Daisy. I- She's been having an awful time, not doing well at school, at war with her mother. If I can move closer to her, find a two bedroom, I could…" He runs a hand through his hair. "Fuck, I don't know. Be there for her at the very least."

"You could be there for her in Broadchurch."

"Not here. Not with the distance." She thinks, sourly, that Mark handles the distance just fine, and then she immediately chides herself for thinking like that. She can't think of someone more the opposite of Mark than Alec Hardy. That's half the reason she wants something decidedly not platonic with him.

"But you could-" she starts, but he shakes his head.

"I've terminated the lease," he says. "I found a new place. All that's left to do is leave."

"It's almost Christmas!" she blurts out. He looks baffled.

"Why would that matter?" he says.

"Because I was going to invite you to our- my Christmas Eve party, you prick!"

"How the devil was I supposed to know that?" he said. It wasn't a 'no'.

"It's just a small get-together, really. Before everything happened it was me, Mark, and the kids, plus our parents, Nige and his mum, and the - the Millers." She barely stumbles over the name now. It's progress, no matter how much she hates calling it that. "You should be there." He grunts. "Oh, come on. You could even bring Daisy, introduce us to her." That gets a smile out of him.

"I'll think about it," he says.

* * *

She's resigned herself to not seeing him on Christmas Eve when she doesn't hear from him after he leaves Broadchurch. For all intents and purposes he disappears, leaving behind a series of uncomfortable revelations that the town will have to deal with in one way or another. She's further along than half of them, and it feels strange to be almost alright again.

Christmas Eve comes, the first since Danny's death where she's been in any shape to put together the usual get-together. The guest list is smaller - her mum's passed away, Mark and his fiancee relieved her by politely begging off - but it's shaping up to be… good. Still good, in spite of everything. Two years ago, the first Christmas after Danny and Mark's infidelity, heavy with the child she still wasn't sure she wanted but was too far along to keep from having, she could never have imagined this. Hardy leaving had left a hole in her life, there's no denying that, but it had been his choice and she isn't about to keep him from it.

An hour before people are supposed to start arriving, there's a knock at the door.

"Chloe, get that please!" she yells from the kitchen, where she's trying to get everything onto platters for the buffet. She hears Chloe go over to the door and turns back to her work. 

"Oh, hi, DI Hardy," she hears her daughter say. Beth almost drops the plate she's holding. Hearing his Scottish grunt of greeting after almost a month of nothing… well, it makes everything she's been steadfastly ignoring come rushing back.

"Tell him to come back in an hour!" she shouts to Chloe, trying to buy herself time.

"I brought wine!" he shouts back.

"Fine!" she says, and somehow that's that. She meets his daughter, who gives him a smirk that only grows when he scowls back, and suddenly there are four of them working instead of two.

Chloe's dragged Daisy upstairs - ostensibly to clean, but Beth suspects that there's going to be more than a little gossip. She knows her daughter.

"So," she says to him as he silently follows her instructions on which food to put on which platter, "you came."

"Said I would think about it, didn't I?"

"You could have called," she says. He shrugs. "The ball was in your court, you do realize that."

"I've never been good at this," he says abruptly.

"At what? Plating up? You seem to be doing fine."

"No, at," he struggles for a moment, "at figuring out what people want from me. I can be a DI, I can be a shit husband, I can even be a friend. I don't know how to…" He makes a sound that sounds half grunt and half groan. It is, in Beth's annoyingly single mind, unbearably guttural and attractive. "I don't know how to tell what you want me to be. Towards you, I mean."

"I don't want you to  _ be _ anything," she says. It's a bit of a lie.

"I didn't want you to get the wrong impression, or - or to think I wanted more than you were willing to have, so I didn't call."

"But you came."

"You invited me."

"You," Beth says, "have no idea how to have a relationship. Any sort of relationship."

"Alright, steady on."

"What do you want, Hardy? I mean, what do you want from us?"

"I want whatever you want."

"I know what I want. What I need to know is what you want." He doesn't answer at first, staring intently at a serving bowl of mushy peas.

"I want whatever you want," he says, an incredible amount of intent on each word.

"That isn't a good enough answer," she says, "because I know what I want, and we need to be on the same page for this."

"Whatever 'this' is," he says, "trust me when I say that I want it too."

"Even if what I want is for us to be a couple?" she says. Her heart is pounding in her throat. Hardy stares at her, wide-eyed, and she can't even begin to parse out his expression.

"I told you that I was a shit husband to Tess," he says at last.

"To Tess," she says, "not to me. Hardy, you've kept trying to bring justice for Danny after everyone else has given up for good reason. You've taken care of Lizzie when I've been too tired or overwhelmed to be a good mum. You've acted more like a proper partner than Mark has for a long time, even with your stupid communication issues."

"I don't have communication issues!"

"Oh, you totally do."

"I," he hesitates, "I'm still trying, for Danny, but I don't - I don't think the evidence is there, not in a way that would be admissible in court. I fucked up, destroyed your life, destroyed even the chance of you getting your justice-"

" _ Joe _ destroyed my life, Joe and Mark. You fucked up, but that doesn't have to stand between us if we decide that it doesn't." He still doesn't look convinced, so she steps towards him and places a hand on his cheek, stroking her thumb over his stubble. "You can forgive yourself, you know." His eyes close, and he shakes his head. "Please."

"If you really - if you wanted  _ us  _ to be-"

"Can I kiss you?" she asks. He nods, once, and she stretches up to do so. He wastes no time, deepening the kiss almost immediately, arms going around her to pull her closer. When they finally surface he looks almost dazed.

"We should," he gestures at the abandoned work that still has to be completed, "but, um, if you want to, afterwards we could do something."

"Of course I want to," she says, still a little breathless. There are only fifteen minutes before the rest of the guests are due to arrive, the girls could come down at any moment, her life is still a bit of a hot mess at the best of times.

None of that matters at the moment, though. As she pulls Hardy in for another kiss, Beth has a feeling that it's going to be a surprisingly happy Christmas this year.

**Author's Note:**

> Weird Christmas Focus? In My August? It's more likely than you think!


End file.
